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THE WATER METER

a short story

by Vassiliki Panagioteli

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I raised my eyes high up to the sky. Angry clouds through and through

presaged a sad day. For quite a while icy drops of rain had begun to fall,

which would not take long to turn into snow.

- Afraid we won’t make it in time, mum?

She, wrapped in a scarf up to her eyes, chose not to respond. She raised

her head to the sky and gazed at the clouds, looking for something to say,

but did not find it.

It had always been like this. The words that could not be said remained

hanging in the air. I knew it well, so I did not insist. I stood there looking

up as well, waiting for a sign that perhaps the weather would not wreak

its anger upon us, at least for a few more hours. A couple of hours earlier

we had travelled in silence the distance to the sea, in a journey so odd for

this season of the year.

Reaching the hut we called summer house, I did not expect that the two

trees in the front yard would cause me such intense fear and insecurity,

outrunning even that torrent of nostalgia, which was waiting for nearly

ten years to burst out.

- You see how high they’ve gone?

I nodded, not wishing to put into words the panic that conquered me at

their sight from the first moment I laid eyes on them. The trees were

standing imperiously in their kingdom moving their huge branches at the

blowing of the wind, all-mighty in the ground, ignorant of the future

looming ahead on this last day of the year. Never had I looked at trees

with so much attention and fear. As far as the eye could reach they spread

out their thick branches, climbing even higher than the electricity wires,

which seemed powerless to obstruct their course.

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___________________________________________________________

I see nothing else. Only two colossal trees, two poplars, reaching up high

for the sky as if wishing to conquer the world. Branches everywhere and

labyrinthine roots pushing the ground upward. Strong and wild, they

ruled the place, arrogant like love in the years of youth.

I hear nothing else but the whistle of the wind through the naked

branches, threatening and imploring at the same time. I held my breath

making a wish. Today these two poplars would be cut off, would

evacuate the place, would relieve not only my fears but those of the

neighbours, who were concerned about the foundations of their houses.

- You better stay in the car, mum. You’ll freeze outside.

I got dizzy looking up, so I looked down defeated and the fear grew

stronger. Their roots had pushed up the paving-stones of the yard, as if

there was no room for them on the ground, and were furiously searching

for another, more ample place to expand.

I think of nothing else. I wish for nothing else. I gaze at their roots in

awe. Not being able to sink in any deeper, they had taken the way

upwards seeking the water that would keep them alive. So close to the sea

they had no other choice for survival.

___________________________________________________________

The little house in the back of the plot looked dilapidated, as much as its

fifteen years of abandonment. Something in the colours of the walls still

showed its old, middle-class grandeur. If you could strain your ears to

listen to the wind whispering, you might hear the flapping of bed sheets

hanging along washing lines some carefree teenage summers, simulating

awnings which no one would dare buy in this wild place.

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Back then, multi-coloured phials of medicine for the heart were hanging

at the entrance of the square veranda, like precious ornament purchased

with taste and aristocratic luxury. The flower beds were bursting with real

flowers, which were struggling to resist withering, inevitable in this salty

soil. Despite their irrevocable fate, they strove to show off the pink and

purple colours of their history under the cooling shade of the two young

trees, which had started to send forth their wide leaves, ignorant of their

destiny to pass prematurely to oblivion.

The little kitchen was bursting with life despite its tiny world. It could fit

an entire summer with lunches soaked in heat and salt, as well as dinners

on the veranda along with an unstoppable fight against mosquitoes and

gnats, which intrepidly sucked life out of all living beings around.

Adjacent to the kitchen, there had been build a shack out of tin, wire and

wood bearing the ambitious sign “Barber’s shop” of grandfather’s, who

occasionally exercised the profession during the summers. Inside it was

dark and sad. A warehouse aspiring to become a shop. Only the royal

chair with its brown, velvet upholstery reminded a little of that aspiration.

The mirror opposite, large but frameless, nailed on the wood, was ideal

for recollections on the days of thunder.

Then, the poplars rustled their leaves vigorously, threateningly shook

their branches, manifesting the dominance they had been promised to

conquer since the beginning of the world. Shoulders bent in fear of a

gloomy future, of an incontrollable speed towards the inevitable, towards

the time that leveled the earth much later than the creation of dreams.

Innocent dreams, frugal, deprived of the gravity that kept them tied to

earth for now and forever.

___________________________________________________________

I made my way to the car and sat beside her trying to warm my numb

hands. I tried to visualize the place without the two poplars, which for

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years now had been nailed to the scenery. I could not do it. Their fate was

in my hands and my decision that they had to be cut off was inescapable.

- You think they won’t come?

Before I had the time to answer, I saw the crew in the mirror taking the

turn into the road.

- They are here, mum. Finally!

Opening the car door, I was struck by the cold wind in the face. I should

not have brought mum along. The cold had become more bitter and the

icy drizzle had been turned to real snow for good.

Her black figure staring at the trees and agonizing clasped my heart. I

could not remember her anymore as she was before putting on the black

clothes forever since dad’s death. I could no longer remember her in

colours, except only when I looked into the blue of her eyes. Only this

reminded me something of the past, this blue which I inherited.

She was standing there in the wind clasping her hands around her in order

to stop the trembling. She watched in awe the height of the trees to be cut

off, not believing as well that it was possible to be done. Her round, black

figure was filling my gaze, nothing else more real and painful could fit

inside me. The men of the crew had already climbed onto the branches

looking for a start to this macabre task.

The wind was hissing everywhere, the sea was threatening to come

ashore and swallow us all, obstructing us to venture on our sacrilegious

intentions. The rain, melancholic and erosive, kept on soaking our

clothes, reminding us of our mortality and ludicrousness.

Only the poplars stood imperious, indifferent and desperately remote, as

if they knew nothing or as if they knew the end but did not want to yield.

When the first branch landed on the ground, I turned my eyes away.

- You better go back in the car, mum. There’s no point to be

standing in the cold.

___________________________________________________________

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When was the first time I set foot on this sandy, warm place? This

memory was also lost under the burden of more recent ones, which strong

and full of life did not allow with their nasty smell for anything else to

smell. I would have to dig deep or perhaps turn my eyes to the chopped

branches piling with rage in the yard.

The sound of the chain-saw or the whistle of the wind was howling in my

ears tantalizing and liberating all at once, airing the foul smells and bad

remnants of life. First I turned my eyes to the car. Mum’s blue gaze had

for quite some time now been fixed on me. I sought her opinion and she

looked high up to the trees, which were giving their unfair fight against

human decision and mechanical power. There were no more branches on

one poplar anymore, just a thick, maltreated trunk, which stood like a log

motionless and unyielding before the work witnessing his imminent

death.

I had never wanted to be part of this. It was not my life. It was the lives of

others who had burdened me with this lethal undertaking. Could this

always be the case? How many of the things in my life were actually

decisions of the free will of a free person? Perhaps a few, if I were lucky.

I looked again at the car and the black-dressed figure quickly met my eye.

Who else could have been here with me today? No one else. Only this

eternal woman who cried diaphanous tears, like when dad was gone

leaving her alone. Only her who was now sitting in the car, defeated by

the cold but not the ills of fate, insubordinate, absolute and in constant

conflict with life.

I should not have brought her along. I thought of myself more and of my

weakness to bring this day to a close, without the help of someone else by

my side. Like a kind of self-punishment, I obstinately refused to sit in the

car with her. I endured the freezing gusts of wind, paying part of the price

for my weakness.

___________________________________________________________

7

The last hours of the year were vanishing in the icy drizzle of this

almighty sky of sadness. They were passing by like so many others

before them, sometime in another life, around a fireplace with familiar

faces, who could not warm me though. Never had there been sleet more

matching to these hours, the final and agonizing hours of the year that

was bidding farewell to the world.

Wanting to or not, the eye met with the clouds amongst branches which

kept falling relentlessly on the paving stones of the yard, these same

clouds which would accompany people’s lonelinesses on earth, when

there would be no witnesses around to support the lightness of life, when

tedious talk would get tired as well, when silence would fall sugary and

weepy and thoughts would find an outlet in the air and start dancing

around people, disturbing their blissful comfort.

These same clouds, this same liberating sky that was always there, like

today. It was New Year’s Eve no more. There were no calendars for these

moments. Only branches that fell down with a thud, severed from their

mother, smashing everything in their path, shuttering pasts, making

presents intolerable, imagination-free.

The blue gaze was following me incessantly; I felt it moving onto me in

desperation. I never turned to meet it again, there was no reason. I knew

well what it was showing, what it was telling me, what it was asking of

me.

___________________________________________________________

The branches kept on falling with an earsplitting noise in this edge of the

world, which seemed to have been stuck in another era, back when snakes

predominated in the bulrushes and mosquitoes came down mercilessly on

any flesh that dared undress before darkness fell.

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There were no ordinary houses, only dark green tents with camp-beds for

the holiday-makers and primitive sanitation conditions. When summer

storms would break out, everything got covered in mud, but it was not

capable of scaring anyone. They would watch the sky from inside the

tent, exactly the same way I was watching it now myself. They knew that

the heavy clouds would go away for other places sooner or later, that the

fitful south wind would eventually give way to its rage and the sun would

shower everything with its glare once again, high up in its blue house.

The only thing that would remind the ferocity of the previous hours

would be the wet sand and the waters of the sea that would carry on being

stirred in the vast mixer of earth.

Today the wind would not give way, making the macabre task of the

chain-saw even harder. The final hours of the dying year were rolling

slowly, icily, painfully. This devastating task seemed to be proceeding

and having stopped at the same time. Nothing was moving and all

together swirled in the whirl of time. No blue anywhere. Only the eyes

that kept staring at me inquiringly through the frozen window of the car.

Down on the ground wreckage of two trees, two lives, two pasts

indissolubly intertwined with an invisible thread in the cycle of being.

- Come inside, you’ll freeze! – I heard the fatal blue trying to say.

___________________________________________________________

What can two poplars do to you? How have they become the problem of

a well-designed life?

When they were planted, the sea was still a tender image. With the group

of summer friends, we used to dive in its warm waters, staring at the little

boats in the horizon, feeling starved after hours of play. During those

summers we learned more than we should have, but would never forget

for a minute, perhaps only when the veil of life would fall heavy on our

teenage expectations and they would vanish in the darkness awaiting a

light so that they could shine again in their grandeur.

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The trees were then little like us, weak but altogether strong, fearless and

ignorant, ephemeral like the happy clouds that momentarily blurred the

relentless summer sun. I used to glare at the obstacles of this course,

everyone would smell them in the air which blew and swept the sand,

sending it in gusts onto the wet skin. These clouds would not have been

so innocent and carefree forever.

- There is no sadder place like an empty, rainy beach -

I would recall at the times of darkness, being all sarcastic of the lack of

light, seeking that wet sand that chilled the feet, but kept them warmer

than the cold of loneliness in maturity.

The trees were still there. There, in front of me, being mutilated with rage

by the iron and the noise of the chain-saw, by human motive to get rid of

the burden of problems, which were not avoided with the teenage mind

and the force of the sea current and the wind of the dusk.

___________________________________________________________

The cold grew stronger as the day was closing in, making this sad duty

even harder. The thud grew heavier and heavier, just like the moments of

life that become unbearable from one point on. The drizzle froze the soul,

whitewashed the stare, brought in the eye the despair of desolation, the

pausing of feelings, the petrification of any thought. The eyes could only

look, they did not connect to thoughts. The mind froze, too. It shut the

windows, hid in the darkness, rejected the light, remained silent.

When did silence fall?

When was hearing lost?

When did the eyes close?

The blue gaze was the only warmth upon me, the eternal warmth, the

never ending anxiety that I would never feel. The sun would not come out

again like back then to warm our play on the sand. Those salty evenings

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with the clouds of dusk painting red the edge of the horizon would never

return. The flavours had changed, saltiness was prohibited, the sun was

dangerous, the trees had to be cut off, die, the problems to keep silent,

their roots to be cut, to be exterminated.

___________________________________________________________

The time which flies by, which passed and perhaps stood once, was there,

on the trunks of the mutilated trees. Nodes, scrapes and perfectly

concentric circles on the flattened trunks, with the roots gasping for air

and fresh water in this salty, sandy soil. Time would not pause easily one

more time, like back then in the youth when all was possible. The course

had been predesigned since the rotation of the earth in the cosmos, with

witnesses being the clouds and alibi the ignorance of what tomorrow has

in stock.

The macabre task was over with the daylight, the last of this strange year.

The drizzle, icy and merciless, kept on hoping to become a storm through

the hollow rumbling far behind the mountain. I bent my head to the

ground, obeying to primitive instincts urging me to see my feet stand on

dry land, even a few metres away from the galloping sea of my winter.

The cold could not touch me anymore, except that I could not feel my

hands in the pockets of my jacket.

I breathed in deep the familiar air of this primitive place, like those who

had planted the two poplars here many years before in order to shade

their summers. The same relief and sadness that accompanies the works

of life and death of everything unique in this life. I tried to picture their

faces, all red from the morning sun, with hope in their eyes for what

would come with branches full of leaves and summers filled with joy.

Where were those moments? In whose mind had they remained intact,

exactly like they were lived?

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In the clouds, in the sky, in the ground that were now weeping for the

disaster and the massacre. I felt small, like when you do not build but tear

down. Looking at the dying branches of the trees fallen incoherently on

the ground I felt deep in the place of the soul the darkness that falls on

what we call future. It would not be easy to erase from the memory of the

world these two tragedies, which were once trees with wide leaves and

universal dreams.

I bent my head and accepted the fate which was right now beginning.

___________________________________________________________

- It’s all over, mum. Come and see.

We walked side by side. Silence was falling heavier and heavier amongst

the branches which were piling now severed from life. Somewhere at the

edge of the plot a strong noise awakened us from the numbness. There

was water flowing, a lot of water.

- The water meter must have broken. What do we do now?

In panic I turned to look at her, unable to believe that this day would

never end. I took a quick look at the spot where the water was gushing

out, trying to estimate how deep under the chopped wood the meter could

be. It was impossible to be reached. I would have to climb on top of the

branches, lift the ones on the lid of the water meter, lift the lid, sink my

hand to its full extent inside the shaft, find the valve and turn it off.

- It’s impossible, mum. And in a while we won’t be able to see at all.

Defeated by the cold and the anxiety, I did not sense her absence from

beside me straightaway, but only when I raised my eyes looking for a

solution from heaven to this extended torment. She was there, on top of

the branches, gasping from the effort to lift them and throw them away. I

stood still watching the strength that I never knew those white hands were

hiding, now bleeding from their touch with the wood and the cold. All of

a sudden, she vanished, as if a deep well had swallowed her, yet I could

hear her breathing, I could hear the grinding of iron and the pressure of

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water settling until I saw her again emerging with the sleeve of her left

hand rolled up as far as the shoulder.

- We can leave now. New Year is almost here.

___________________________________________________________

Gone are the trees which once supported the existence of some dream.

They were slaughtered out of lack of knights which protected them with

their lives. Breath was lost, became another, thinner and scentless.

Yesterday was put in the chest destined for a dusty attic, abandoned in the

oblivion of time and the indifference of tomorrow.

There were no more words. Only gazes and silences.

The water meter, albeit turned off, carried on keeping readings...

April 2009

Copyright © Vassiliki Panagioteli

All rights reserved.